“Thank you. And...likewise.”
“For these past two years, I have loved Sara, and she has rejected me time and time again because I am selfish and greedy.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared at him in the darkness, watching as he stared down at the bottle on the table. “I wish I’d listened to her. I wish I’d changed to be a better man so we could be together. I just kept thinking that in life, there were winners and losers, and I felt sure this would be true even in war. I wanted to be a winner. I told myself that she would wait and that when I made bucketloads of money, I would turn over a new leaf, and we’d be married.”
“You still could...” I offered helplessly.
“I want to. I just keep thinking about your young friend and how, if there were a quota for suffering, he would have met it some time ago, and yet still he suffers.”
“It’s not fair.”
“He is a good man, Emilia. Sara sees in him what she wishes she saw in me.”
“You can change. Can’t you?”
“I want to do something for Roman. Do you remember when we were supposed to go to Lodz, and you so desperately did not want to go?”
“Of course,” I whispered, laughing weakly. “That was only two weeks ago.”
“It feels like longer.”
“It does.”
“I should have insisted he come with us. I should have told him that he had already proved himself a hero and that he owed this country nothing. Do you know that I watched them march into the ghetto?”
“His family?” I said, startled.
“Probably. I don’t know. I watched thousands of Jews walk past me on the street as the Germans marched them in, and I told myself all kinds of reasons that it was going to be okay and why I shouldn’t get involved. Now I wonder...if I were a better man, would Sara have told me the truth about what she was really doing during those months? From time to time, she would ask me for papers or food, but I had no idea the extent of it. If I knew, would I have done something? If an opportunity had presented itself to me, could I have been courageous enough to take a stand? To risk my life, the way you did?”
“Uncle Piotr,” I whispered, and I reached across to put my hand on his. He sniffed again and then wiped the back of his other hand across the bottom of his nose. In the moonlight, I saw the shine of tears and snot, and my stomach contracted. “You aren’t perfect, but you are a good man. Most likely, you saved me and Mateusz and Truda.”
“Sure,” he said bitterly. “When my brother comes to me for help, I agree. Then I trap him and his family in a city as it begins to collapse around him.” He removed his hand from mine to scrub it over his face. “You should go to bed. It’s late.”
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked him uneasily.
“I am going to atone for my sins,” he announced, then he sighed heavily. “I just don’t know how. But I’m going to find a way to do something good for your friend, and then I’m going to get you and your parents out of the city before it is too late.”
* * *
The next few days, Piotr was constantly in motion. He was in and out of the apartment, visiting his friends all over our district, trying to find a safe passage past the AK barricades that were keeping us safe and through the German-held parts of the city.
“I promise you, I’ll get you out of the city,” he kept saying. “I know I let you down, but I’m going to make up for it. I promise.”
“I know,” I would say, feeling uncomfortable with his desperate contrition.
“I’m going to convince Roman to come with us. And Sara. I don’t know how, but I’m going to find a way.”
And then he was gone again, trying to find a sewer guide who would take us and a way to line up transport so we wouldn’t have to walk to Lodz.
Our district had been within an AK stronghold almost from the beginning, but the conflict came in waves, and the borders were constantly shifting. The AK would fight back and gain ground, then the Germans would crush it and slaughter untold civilians and destroy entire buildings, as if to reinforce the point. From the safe harbor of our apartment, I could see columns of smoke rising here and there. Rooftops I could see one day gone by the next.
I was increasingly aware of a sense of doom creeping in. Even if Piotr could find someone to take us through the sewers, our chances of escape were slim. When Mateusz or Truda had ventured out for food over the weeks of the Uprising, they’d brought back increasingly awful stories of Germans dropping grenades down manholes onto groups of people below or welding shut the manhole covers to eliminate previously safe routes. I couldn’t believe our best bet for survival was to wade through raw sewage, praying that grenades didn’t fall onto our heads and hoping that the exit hadn’t been sealed before we reached it.
On Sunday the thirteenth of August, Uncle Piotr came flying into the house in a flurry of excitement. He squeezed me in a bear hug, then announced triumphantly, “I figured it out! It’s going to cost almost all of the money I have left in the city, but don’t worry—we are going to be okay.”
“What’s the plan?” Mateusz asked him.
“I’ll tell you on the way, brother. We need to speak with Sara, and we need to visit Roman—hopefully he will be at his battalion headquarters.” Uncle Piotr pointed to Truda, then to me. “Pack lightly. One small bag, that’s all. Nothing that can’t be washed. We will be going through the sewers for at least part of the journey. When we get to Lodz, we will stay at my apartment. It’s so much nicer than this dump anyway, and I have plenty of money stacked away there. Once we are safe, I will replace everything you have lost, I promise, and we will live like kings.”
28
Roman
Two weeks into the Uprising and our squad of twenty-one had been reduced to six. Those left no longer boasted or celebrated. They were doing whatever they could just to make it through to another sunrise.
Sword seemed to have taken it upon himself to become my partner. It wasn’t that he clung to me so much as followed me around—keeping a safe distance from danger whenever possible, allowing me to handle any conflict we encountered. We didn’t have nearly enough weapons, which wasn’t a bad thing for Sword. He shook violently whenever we encountered German soldiers, and at one point I found him rocking in the corner of the bunk room, whispering, “I didn’t think it would be like this” over and over again. I did not want to feel sorry for him—after all, I had warned him—but there was something so boyish about Sword.
“When is help coming?” he kept asking Needle.
“We should get enforcements from the Red Army today. We just have to hold the line,” Needle said over and over again.